I'm Watermark
Diabetic
"There will be no second coming of Milton Friedman in these troubled economic times, so perhaps it’s time for libertarians and other economic liberals to find a new god.
In a short essay, “Why Is There no Milton Friedman Today?,” Econ Journal Watch, May 2010, at 210, Jude Richard Posner makes the case that Freidman’s success as both an academic economist and policy promoter cannot easily be replicated today. In fact, it might be impossible. According to Posner, Friedman was in the right place at the right time when, at the close of the 1970s, conservative politicians on both sides of the Atlantic sought to rejuvenate their staggering economies by adopting neoliberal prescriptions of low taxes and deregulation. It was a mantra that Friedman had been repeating for decades, albeit one that fell on deaf ears during more prosperous periods. So why, during our current decline in prosperity, has another Friedman not risen up to save us? As Posner points out, few (if any) economists living today possess Friedman’s rhetorical skills. Most are incapable of making their highly mathematized findings intelligible to politicians or the population at large. More importantly, many of the animating assumptions of neoclassical economics are ideologically informed; they lack the scientific rigor (or the assumption of scientific rigor) that once made economics appear to many as a science akin to physics and biology.
The latter observation might strike some as startling given Posner’s longstanding association with the Chicago School’s Law & Economics movement, but as I pointed out in a recent post, “Posner,” the prolific judge from Hyde Park apostatized from the libertarian economic camp following the 2008 financial crisis. While it’s not clear that Posner has fully abandoned his support for low-level antitrust enforcement and the deregulation of industries such as telecommunications, his piece on Friedman appears to admit that neoclassical economics as a whole is built on a series of faith-based assumptions that cannot withstand critical scrutiny by behavioral economists. If that critique is true for the shoddy thinking that led to the deregulation of financial markets, why isn’t it true for the thinking that led to the deregulation of airlines? Where does one draw the line?
Not surprisingly, the Friedman essay also reveals a few things about Posner’s personal disposition on a number of social topics. Posner asserts, without supporting argumentation, that libertarian economists “advocate a number of sensible reforms, such as ending the war on drugs, authorizing physician-assisted suicide, allowing the sale of kidneys and other organs, deregulating the adoption market, abolishing tax deductions for employer-provided health insurance, liberalizing immigration, privatizing the postal sector, and abolishing agricultural subsidies[.]” But why are any of these “sensible” and, more fundamentally, what does Posner even mean by “sensible”? In numerous articles and books, Posner writes about the importance of judges reaching “sensible results” in cases, but the standard for “sensibility” never seems to transcend the subjective preferences of the individual judge. Moreover, the argument for deregulating the adoption and organ markets is primarily economic; but hasn’t Posner just called into question the veracity of economics or, at least, the sort of free-market economics that he himself relied upon when co-authoring the infamous article, “The Economics of the Baby Shortage,” 7 Journal of Legal Studies 373 (1978) and, later, “The Regulation of the Market in Adoptions,” 67 Boston University Law Review 59 (1987)? Again, where does one draw the line when it comes to the veracity of economic thinking?
Last November I posted “A Brief Note on the End of Libertarianism” in which I sketched a socio-demographic argument for libertarianism’s likely demise as a genuine force in American politics. The position I took in that post is only strengthened by Posner’s observations. Without a new prophet, nay, a new god to grace libertarianism with a new gospel supported by seemingly divine intellectual inspiration, the movement will be stuck thumping dusty tomes that few outside the circle of converts bother to take seriously anymore. “Austrian Economics,” which never had the reputational force in America that the Chicago School once wielded, is probably not the answer either. Besides, according to “Austrians,” economists are only capable of explaining the “is”; they are methodologically barred from proclaiming “ought” (though that’s never stopped them before)."
http://modestinus.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/no-second-coming-for-libertarians/
In a short essay, “Why Is There no Milton Friedman Today?,” Econ Journal Watch, May 2010, at 210, Jude Richard Posner makes the case that Freidman’s success as both an academic economist and policy promoter cannot easily be replicated today. In fact, it might be impossible. According to Posner, Friedman was in the right place at the right time when, at the close of the 1970s, conservative politicians on both sides of the Atlantic sought to rejuvenate their staggering economies by adopting neoliberal prescriptions of low taxes and deregulation. It was a mantra that Friedman had been repeating for decades, albeit one that fell on deaf ears during more prosperous periods. So why, during our current decline in prosperity, has another Friedman not risen up to save us? As Posner points out, few (if any) economists living today possess Friedman’s rhetorical skills. Most are incapable of making their highly mathematized findings intelligible to politicians or the population at large. More importantly, many of the animating assumptions of neoclassical economics are ideologically informed; they lack the scientific rigor (or the assumption of scientific rigor) that once made economics appear to many as a science akin to physics and biology.
The latter observation might strike some as startling given Posner’s longstanding association with the Chicago School’s Law & Economics movement, but as I pointed out in a recent post, “Posner,” the prolific judge from Hyde Park apostatized from the libertarian economic camp following the 2008 financial crisis. While it’s not clear that Posner has fully abandoned his support for low-level antitrust enforcement and the deregulation of industries such as telecommunications, his piece on Friedman appears to admit that neoclassical economics as a whole is built on a series of faith-based assumptions that cannot withstand critical scrutiny by behavioral economists. If that critique is true for the shoddy thinking that led to the deregulation of financial markets, why isn’t it true for the thinking that led to the deregulation of airlines? Where does one draw the line?
Not surprisingly, the Friedman essay also reveals a few things about Posner’s personal disposition on a number of social topics. Posner asserts, without supporting argumentation, that libertarian economists “advocate a number of sensible reforms, such as ending the war on drugs, authorizing physician-assisted suicide, allowing the sale of kidneys and other organs, deregulating the adoption market, abolishing tax deductions for employer-provided health insurance, liberalizing immigration, privatizing the postal sector, and abolishing agricultural subsidies[.]” But why are any of these “sensible” and, more fundamentally, what does Posner even mean by “sensible”? In numerous articles and books, Posner writes about the importance of judges reaching “sensible results” in cases, but the standard for “sensibility” never seems to transcend the subjective preferences of the individual judge. Moreover, the argument for deregulating the adoption and organ markets is primarily economic; but hasn’t Posner just called into question the veracity of economics or, at least, the sort of free-market economics that he himself relied upon when co-authoring the infamous article, “The Economics of the Baby Shortage,” 7 Journal of Legal Studies 373 (1978) and, later, “The Regulation of the Market in Adoptions,” 67 Boston University Law Review 59 (1987)? Again, where does one draw the line when it comes to the veracity of economic thinking?
Last November I posted “A Brief Note on the End of Libertarianism” in which I sketched a socio-demographic argument for libertarianism’s likely demise as a genuine force in American politics. The position I took in that post is only strengthened by Posner’s observations. Without a new prophet, nay, a new god to grace libertarianism with a new gospel supported by seemingly divine intellectual inspiration, the movement will be stuck thumping dusty tomes that few outside the circle of converts bother to take seriously anymore. “Austrian Economics,” which never had the reputational force in America that the Chicago School once wielded, is probably not the answer either. Besides, according to “Austrians,” economists are only capable of explaining the “is”; they are methodologically barred from proclaiming “ought” (though that’s never stopped them before)."
http://modestinus.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/no-second-coming-for-libertarians/
